What strikes me as a fair critique of Moore’s documentary, which draws, howbeit with some misrepresentation, from Catholic social teaching in addressing the current financial crisis. (Via Carl Olson).
Fr. Robert Barron reviews Michael Moores Capitalism: A Love Story
Christopher Blosser
Band of Bearded Brothers with Joe.
He says the same thing I’ve been saying for some time. Moore is good at identifying the problems – it’s just his Socialist (thus materialist) solutions where he departs Church teaching.
The idea that everyone should keep just enough to cover essentials and give the rest away is intriguing, and probably aspirationally correct, but using government to do this will not work. Pretty much everyone will stop working soon after covering the essentials. Very little will be produced that can be given away. This fact can be illustrated by tax rates. At a 0% tax rate the government gets essentially the same revenue generated by a 100% tax rate. It is why the Soviet Union economic motto was “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Our modern world had become intentionally complex leading to much confusion about what is meant by words. Capitalism and socialsim/communism are such words and we’ve had another thread on here addressing that.
What Moore fails to do is be honest. He is a Marxist and his attack on ‘capitalism’ isn’t designed to point out the perceived excess in capitalism but seeks to promote the virtues of socialism. Fr. Barron already killed that argument.
Furthermore, the excess in capitalism is not inherent in the system of a natural free market; rather it is in the disordered appetites of fallen humanity. The solution is not a better capitalism, but a more virtuous human. That cannot be accomplished by any materialist system. It requires a massive cultural shift away from the vices of modernism and an upward view of life.
That Priest is a great teacher.
Moore against capitalism? Not according to the IRS and Fleet Financial, a high-end brokerage firm out of Boston.
Check out the PF990 forms for his one-man operated non-profit: Center for Alternative Media and Culture. The year he made Stupid White Men, and claimed not to won any stocks, he told the IRS his foundation owned $280,000 in corporate stock and $100,00 in corporate bonds.
His foundation has owned Pfizer, Merck, Genzyme, Elan PLC, Eli Lilly, Boston Scientific, Pharmacial Corporation, and Tenet Healthcare. . Not what you’d
expect from a man who made Sicko. Hates big oil and Haliburton – then why did he own stocks in them?
The above and more is from Peter Schweizer’s Do As I Say (Not as I do). Check our enviornmentalists Ted Kenneday and Nancy Pelosi. What hypocrites!
Bottom line, the guy is a multi-millionaire who has treated the Catholic Church contemptimbly over issues such as marriage, contraception/abortion, homosexuality and now tries to get “approval” from the Church when it suits him.
Rerum Novarum specifically condems socialism and is adamant about the principle of subsidiarity. Centisimus Annus confirms it. I’m not sure where Fr. Barron get the idea that big government interference is warranted to correct injustice. Lest we forget – big government in the form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is part of the problem.
The Acton Institure and the Distributist League disagree with each other but the traditional New Deal as nostalgia school of economics that Fr. Barron subscribes is one thing both groups disagree with!
Anyone familiar with the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics? It went two two Americans who documented that government spending during the Depression actually prolonged it by five years.